Steve Martini - Guardian of Lies

Katia’s lawyer can’t be sure what his client may have said to me the day we met or how such an innocuous and innocent episode might be dressed up or drawn out to look incriminating if I were forced onto the stand; the specter of another older man being hustled by the young, alluring suspect. The best way to inoculate Katia from this is to draw me into the case. Once I talk to her, even tangentially, as lawyer to client, my testimony is verboten. The prosecution probably couldn’t even get my business card into evidence.

Katia seems happy, even if surprised, to see me. Why she didn’t think to use my business card to call, I’m not sure. And I don’t ask.

“I guess we should start at the beginning, why you took the bus?” says Harry.

This isn’t exactly the beginning I might have started with, wondering instead how she met Emerson Pike and how their relationship developed. But I leave it to Harry for the moment.

“If you wanted to return to Costa Rica, why not fly?” says Harry. “There are direct flights to points south out of San Diego.”

“I couldn’t,” she says. “The first place Emerson would have looked for me was the airport.”

“Emerson Pike was dead,” says Harry.

“I did not know that. All I know is that he was alive when I left the house.” She looks at me on this. “You must believe me. I knew he would follow me. And the first place he would go would be the airport in San Diego. Besides, I didn’t have enough money to take a plane.”

“Let’s talk about that, the money,” says Harry. “Pike’s wallet, the one the cops found on the bed, had your fingerprints on it. Did you know that?”

She shakes her head no, and then says, “Of course. I am not surprised. I took the money from his wallet. I already told the police that. I needed the money for the, how do you say? The boleto. ”

“The ticket,” I say.

“For the boose.” She is talking about the bus. “It was the only way I could get away from Emerson. He wouldn’t give me money. And he wouldn’t let me go.”

Harry is standing less than two feet from her, one foot on a chair, looking down at her. This is one of his favorite postures when he’s visiting someone in jail and wants answers. “Why wouldn’t he let you go?”

“I don’t know.” She looks at him, shaking her head. “He wouldn’t tell me. I asked him, over and over again. But he refused to tell me. He said he loved me. But I know that wasn’t true.”

My partner shoots me a cynical glance. Harry is thinking, older man, younger woman, the oldest reason on earth.

Katia’s darting eyes vacuum up Harry’s thoughts. “No. Es not that,” she says. “It’s something else. It’s something to do with the pictures. I’m sure.”

“What pictures?” I ask.

She spends several minutes telling us about the photographs taken by her mother in Colombia the year before and the fact that Emerson Pike seemed to be obsessed with these the moment he found them in her camera. She tells us that it was then that Pike first suggested they take a trip north to the States to stay at his house near San Diego, and about Emerson’s wizardry in obtaining a short-order visa for her, as if on demand.

Harry has a puzzled look. “How long did you say the visa took?”

“Three days.”

Harry makes a note. “Easy enough to check it out,” he says.

Katia tells us about her mother who, as far as she knows, is still down in Colombia, visiting relatives. Emerson was having Katia call home every day, checking to see if her mother had gotten home yet, back to Costa Rica. According to Katia, although she can’t prove it, she is certain that Emerson was not going to take her back to Costa Rica until Katia’s mother was back there, and maybe not even then. Emerson Pike’s captive. This may be the best defense she has, perhaps the only one.

“Why didn’t you go to the police, or the Costa Rican consulate?” I ask. “If you’d gone to them, you wouldn’t be in this mess now. They would have provided assistance. You know that.”

She looks at me sheepishly. “I couldn’t be sure of that. Emerson was a powerful man. He had a great deal of money. He would have friends in the police. Look at how quickly he was able to get the visa for me to come here.” She has every explanation in the book for not making two simple phone calls.

“Did he ever hit you?” Harry plumbs the depths and comes up empty.

“No.”

“Did he ever lock you up, confine you anywhere?”

“No. But I think he was going to. If he knew I was trying to leave.”

“But he never did it?”

“No. He would not let me have cash. He took money away from me whenever he found it. And then he would send money to my family in Costa Rica. It made no sense unless he was trying to keep them quiet and keep me here against my will.”

“Did you tell him you wanted to leave, to go back to Costa Rica?”

“Almost every day. Sometimes several times a day.”

“And what did he say?”

“He made excuses. Next week. Next month. Two weeks from now, and then he would change the subject.”

“Did you think of going to the police?” Harry knows this is the first question the prosecutor will ask if they get Katia on the stand.

“No. But if I had to, I would have. He knew it.”

“These pictures,” I ask, “the ones your mother took, why would they be of concern to Emerson?”

“That’s what I wanted to know. He wouldn’t tell me,” she says.

“Where are the pictures now?”

According to Katia, the police have them. They were in her bag the day they arrested her. She and Emerson had argued over the photographs the night she left. He had finally given them back to her and she had stashed them in her overnight bag before she left the house.

“That brings us to the bag,” says Harry. “What else was in there?” Harry already knows, but he wants to hear what Katia has to say.

“You mean the gold coins and the stubs from the pawnshop dealer? I already told them all about it.” Katia is talking about the police and her earlier statements to them.

Her plan was simple. When she flew into the country with Pike coming north, they landed and changed planes in Houston. She knew she could get back home from there. She also knew she had enough money from the cash in Pike’s wallet the night he was killed for a one-way bus ticket from San Diego to Houston. She had gathered the bus fare information off the Internet when Pike wasn’t looking.

According to Katia, the gold coins she took from Pike’s study were to cover the cost of an airline ticket from Houston home to Costa Rica. The exact cost of the airfare was less certain. She couldn’t be sure. But she knew one thing. She needed time to cash out the coins. According to Katia, the bus ride would give her that time, all the while putting distance between herself and Emerson Pike. While he was searching the airport for her, she would be gone. She fenced some of the coins at a pawnshop in a small town in western Arizona just hours before the police caught up with her. The pawn tickets were still in her purse, along with the cash. When they stopped her, Katia thought she was being arrested for theft.

One thing was clear, if anyone should be in jail it was the pawnshop owner. Katia had no idea of the value of what she was selling. According to expert appraisals, she had pawned more than thirty thousand dollars in rare coins and had received just over fourteen hundred dollars in cash, far less than the gold content of the coins she’d sold.

“What happened to the rest of the coins?” says Harry.

“They were in my bag,” she says.

“No. No, I mean the other two hundred and eighty-six coins. That’s what the police are estimating is gone, the ones from the drawers. The ones you broke into.”